Jana tagged me via email to write my top 5 things, so here goes!

1. I can cook.
Unbeknownst to my husband, relatives, friends, and colleagues, I actually have the ability to cook. My brother and I used to cook up a storm when we were little kids growing up in our cramped apartment in Athens. We used to make “meatsa pie,” shrimp scampi, complicated omelettes, cakes, cupcakes, etc. We even came up with a pretty good shrimp recipe on the fly which includes paprika. These days, I feel confident that I have mastered my mom’s Greek tomato sauce recipe (it includes some secret ingredients that my Greek Yaya used when she made hers). The main issue here in people not believing or knowing that I cook, is that my husband comes from an Italian family and he is an amateur chef. So I LOVE enjoying all the meals he and his family make me, hence my role as a sous chef for the past 9 years! Lets see what happens when I go on maternity leave, maybe I will be cooking more!

2. My iLab interns think I am legendary
Just so you understand how ancient I feel, my iLab interns from 2005 called me “legendary” when I told them about going to Lollapalooza 1 in 1991 (I was a sophomore at Rutgers College then) featuring Jane’s Addiction, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Living Color, Nine Inch Nails, Ice-T/Body Count, Butthole Surfers, the Henry Rollins Band. Henry Rollins said hi to me as he ran by on the way to the stage, I was in a crazy mosh pit when the Nine Inch Nails were rocking on stage, I was covered in a lot of dirt by the time Jane’s Addiction started playing, and again ended up in the mosh pit over there as well.

3. Dismantling soft ice-cream machines was fun!
I am sure people know I used to work at an ice-cream store (Hill’s Ice Cream) at the Bridgewater Commons Mall in NJ during my college years. What you may not know is that I used to be the one person responsible for taking apart and cleaning the entire soft ice-cream machine. This is not an easy task nor one that the owner George Jones would take lightly or train anyone to do. He trained me so well, that I could dismantle, clean, and put the 30+ pieces back together in less than 30 minutes. I must have been a mechanic or an army sergeant in another life, because I loved this part of my job. I don’t miss cleaning the metal ice-cream bins with chlorinated water, but I do kinda miss taking apart that soft ice-cream machine!

4. I am and always will be an adrenaline junkie
Here are some crazy things I used to do when I was younger and more ignorant of the perils of death. My brother and I used to dive off of a cliff in the south of Greece, that was on top of an underwater cave and if you didn’t jump in exactly the right spot, you would probably be smashed by sharp jagged rocks that lie on each side of the cave entrance. Once I went spelunking near a different cave in Greece where you had to drag yourself on your belly for 50 feet, until finally emerging in a beautiful cave with water below. The only way to get out, was to jump the 10 feet into the water, and swim underwater for about 10 feet holding your breath between rocks till you popped out on the other side in the open ocean. In 1992 I bungee-jumped 132 feet off a crane in Cairns, Australia (I still have the video and tee shirt to prove it). I went scuba-diving on the Great Barrier Reef near a lagoon with sharks all around us (will not do that again). Of course the risk level of my crazy stunts has decreased over the years, but doing a marathon was tough, and now I am having a kid! My next adventure plan? I want to go sky-diving and hand-gliding, anyone interested in coming with me?

5. I left my parents at age 11 for one week (in 1982)
When I was in 7th grade I was obsessed with Ancient Egypt, pharoahs, mummies, pyramids, and the Sahara desert.
Luckily, my school - ACS - (American Community School of Athens, Greece) started a brand new exchange program with the ACS school in Cairo, Egypt. There was fierce competition to get accepted into this exchange program (can you imagine a bunch of 11 yr olds all fighting to get in?) and I ended up writing an 14 pg paper on the mummification process, created a mummy (with an old barbie doll) complete with a decorated sarcophagus (painted shoebox), and had to present my argument on why I should go - in front of 5 teachers! I got really lucky and was accepted, and then I had to convince my parents to let me leave the country without them for 1 week. Again, I have no idea why my parents let me go, but they did! My culture shocked and slightly disappointing trip to Cairo included: riding a camel in the Sahara, enjoying a stroll at the Khan Khalidi Bazaar where I witnessed my teacher getting pickpocketed by a 5 year old and all of us girls got snake whistles by the men, climbing a claustrophobic and quite smelly ladder in one of the pyramids, museum visit to see King Tut’s mask, and a papyrus creation demo - all got me hooked on traveling for life!! I have been a faithful traveler and pursuer of strange new lands ever since. I hope Scott and I continue to travel with our soon to be daughter!